1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the testing of integrated circuits (ICs) and more particularly to automated test equipment (ATE) for testing one or more ICs.
2. Description of Related Art
The increasing complexity of System-on-a-Chip (SOC) devices and the simultaneous demand for a reduction in the cost of chip testing has forced both IC manufacturers and tester vendors to rethink how IC testing should be performed. According to industry studies, without re-engineering the projected cost of testers will continue to rise dramatically in the near future.
A major reason for the high cost of test equipment is the specialized nature of conventional tester architecture. Each tester manufacturer has a number of tester platforms that are not only incompatible across companies such as Advantest, Teradyne and Agilent, but also incompatible across platforms such as the T3300, T5500 and T6600 series testers manufactured by Advantest. Because of these incompatibilities, each tester requires its own specialized hardware and software components that cannot be used on other testers. In addition, a significant translation effort is required to port a test program from one tester to another, and third party solutions are difficult to develop. Even when a third party solution is developed for a platform, it cannot be ported or reused on a different platform. The translation process from one platform to another is generally complex and error prone, resulting in additional effort, time and increased test cost.
A major reason for the high cost of test equipment is the specialized nature of conventional tester architecture. Each tester manufacturer has a number of tester platforms that are not only incompatible across companies such as Advantest, Teradyne and Agilent, but also incompatible across platforms manufactured by the same company, such as the T3300, T5500 and T6600 series testers manufactured by Advantest. Because of these incompatibilities, each tester requires its own specialized hardware and software components that cannot be used on other testers. In addition, a significant translation effort is required to port a test program from one tester to another, and third party solutions are difficult to develop. Even when a third party solution is developed for a platform, it cannot be ported or reused on a different platform. The translation process from one platform to another is generally complex and error prone, resulting in additional effort, time and increased test cost.
Tester software such as the operating system and test analysis tools/applications run on a host computer. Because of the dedicated nature of the architecture, all hardware and software remain in a fixed configuration for a given tester. To test an IC, a dedicated test program is developed that uses some or all of the tester capabilities to define the test data, signals, waveforms, and current and voltage levels, as well as to collect the DUT response and determine DUT pass/fail.
Because a tester should be able to test a wide variety of ICs, both hardware and software components are designed to work over a wide range of operations. Thus, a tester contains many resources that are not used in many test situations. At the same time, for a given IC, the tester may not provide the most desirable resources that are suitable for that IC. For example, a logic tester that is suitable to test a complex SoC A that contains an embedded microcontroller, large embedded DRAM and flash, and various other cores such as PCI and USB etc., may be found inadequate for an ASIC B that does not have an embedded microcontroller and large embedded DRAM/flash, but includes DACs and Sigma-Delta converters. To test ASIC B, an appropriate tester would require analog and mixed-signal test units rather than extensive support for embedded memory testing.
Hence, it is desirable to provide a tester that can be reconfigured depending upon testing requirements. In addition, it is desirable to connect and use other vendor's equipment in connection with ATEs. However, because of the specialized nature of conventional test systems and the proprietary nature of the data format in each vendor's equipment, it is frequently impossible to plug-in and use equipment from another vendor.